SUMMARY
Google has agreed to abide by all data privacy requirements of the RBI but has sought two months more for the compliance
In April, the RBI had asked all payment system operators in the country to store data relating to their customers in India
The deadline for payment companies to store data locally is October 15
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With the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s deadline requiring companies to host customer payment data locally coming closer, global search giant Google has reportedly sought “a couple of months” more to comply with the directive.
A top official in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, who was present at a meeting between Union Minister for Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad and Google CEO Sundar Pichai last month in California in the US, said that Pichai conveyed to the minister the company’s decision to abide by the RBI’s data localisation directive.
RBI’s Data Localisation Mandate: Voices Of Protest
In April, the RBI had asked all payment system operators in the country to store payment data relating to their Indian customers on servers in the country to provide “unfettered access” to regulators and to ensure that user details remain secure in case of privacy breaches.
Companies were given six months to comply with the new norms. The deadline for complying with the RBI’s directive is October 15.
According to the RBI, at present, only a handful of payment systems operators in India and their outsourcing partners store user data, either partially or completely.
Even though players such as Paytm and Microsoft have come forward to support the RBI’s data regulations, foreign payment companies have criticised the move. Nikhil Pahwa, the co-founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation and Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), also opposed the directive saying that app makers were already heavily regulated under the IT Act.
Earlier, Google India head Rajan Anandan said that the company would comply with local laws in the country and would work with industry associations and the government towards ensuring a right policy framework.
“Today, it is a global Internet economy. Obviously, when you change any aspect of that, you have to be very thoughtful of what you want to change because it has implications on many things,” Anandan said.
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